School district leaders in the region are intrigued by education proposals Gov. Andrew Cuomo unveiled in his State of the State address last week, such as providing state funding to better serve underprivileged students, but they remain wary about where the money will come from.

"To help close the achievement gap, we must ensure that our students spend more time learning," the governor said on Wednesday in proposing a competitive grant program to encourage school districts to lengthen their calendars.

Cuomo's points about lengthening the school day and year to address low test scores and graduation rates among poor and minority students in many ways mirrors an approach the Rev. James Childs, a member of the Kingston school board, has been advocating.

Last month, Childs proposed expanding the elementary school day through a flexible scheduling approach that staggers when certain educators arrive at school. That way, he said, teachers would not have to work extra hours, and children who need services like physical or occupational therapy would not have to be pulled out of core classes.

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That approach, which would have to be negotiated with the Kingston Teachers Federation, would help the district respond to the fact that many students do not get the academic support and encouragement they need at home by giving children more time with adults in school, Childs has said.

The governor's speech indicated such a plan is the kind he wants to see in grant applications.

"Quality extended learning time requires school leadership and unions to re-imagine the way the school day is structured and how instruction is delivered, and to negotiate agreements to maximize the impact of more instructional time," Cuomo said.

Childs on Friday said both the school year extension and Cuomo's proposal to provide grant money to expand the state's universal prekindergarten program from 2{ to five hours per day for high-need students have merit. Kingston teachers, meanwhile, have highlighted research that shows students in poor families tend to lose more ground over the summer than their more affluent peers and that impoverished students tend to come to school with fewer reading experiences than other pupils, leaving more educational ground to be made up.

"The problem I have is we can talk a lot about vision, but when the budget comes, we'll find out if the vision is there," Childs said.

Childs, like many other education advocates around the region, does not want to see regular state aid converted into competitive grants for specific new programs at a time when districts say they are struggling to make ends meet.

Charles Khoury, the superintendent of the Ulster Board of Cooperative Educational Services, said he, too, is expecting more clarity about what the government has in mind when Cuomo delivers his 2013-14 budget proposal to the state Legislature. He said the budget request by the state Board of Regents "leaves no room for competitive grants" at a time when teacher pension costs are expected to increase by about 25 percent and health insurance costs are expected to increase, on average, by 8.5 percent.

Converting regular aid into competitive grants could create a scenario in which rural districts without art, music and sports programs have to compete for money to expand prekindergarten, Khoury said.

Rondout Valley school district Superintendent Rosario Agostaro noted New York state does not currently mandate kindergarten but the governor plans to "somehow fund pre-K."

Targeting the grants toward high-need students could give big cities like New York and Buffalo a leg up on winning grant awards, but Khoury said districts like Kingston still could have a shot with strong applications, depending on what the rules are determined to be.

Agostaro was interested in Cuomo's proposal to use competitive grants to create "innovation zones" designed to encourage districts to better utilize technology to enhance learning, particularly in light of Rondout Valley's focus on expanding science, technology, math and engineering instruction. Depending on eligibility, Agostaro said his district would apply for funding.

Agostaro said he was disappointed that the governor did not discuss mandate relief for schools in his speech, which came just weeks after the governor's Mandate Relief Council voted down 51 of 65 requests for help from local governments and school districts in what once was billed as an effort to give local governments better flexibility to operate under the state-mandated tax cap.